TV Notes; Ratings for a Crisis

By BILL CARTER

Published: January 28, 1998

The news was watched more heavily than usual last week during the first days of the White House crisis. Among the networks, ABC clearly benefited most from its coverage of the President's problems, ending its recent stint in last place by passing CBS and closing to within three-tenths of a rating point of NBC.

NBC still led all the newscasts with a 9.3 rating. ABC had a 9 and CBS an 8.5. Each network rating point represents 980,000 homes.

As usually happens during times of great news interest, the all-news cable networks displayed striking ratings growth. CNN was up 60 percent from the same week last year, averaging a 0.8 rating over 24 hours each day last week. Both MSNBC and Fox News doubled their ratings, to a 0.4 and a 0.2 respectively.

The highest-rated cable news program for the week was the Friday edition of ''Larry King Live'' on CNN, with Gennifer Flowers as the guest. That scored a 3.6 rating.

Each CNN point represents 726,000 homes. Each MSNBC point represents 361,000 homes, and each Fox News point represents 263,000 homes. BILL CARTER